To prepare a section of a biological specimen, such as a histological tissue specimen, for mounting upon a microscope slide, typically after fixation, dehydration and infiltration with melted paraffin, the specimen is embedded in a block of paraffin. Typically, sections are then cut from the embedded specimen by mounting the block of paraffin in the vise of a microtome, and relatively moving a cutting blade through the block, following small incremental advances at right angles to the cutting motion.
The sections are then mounted upon one or more microscopic slides and stained. Apparatus and procedures for mounting tissues upon microscope slides are generally described in the patent to: J. B. McCormick, Embedding Structure and Method, U.S. Pat. No. 2,996,762, issued on Aug. 22, 1971.
One of the long standing problems with the preparation of such slides resides in assuring proper identification of each tissue specimen throughout the entire tissue processing. Presently, each specimen comes to the laboratory with an accompanying handwritten paper label, typically bearing the patient's identification number. Throughout the processing, this label is manually transferred or transcribed several times to various processing containers. After processing, each slide is hand-marked with the label number by the technician. Such procedure is fraught with opportunity for error, and is time-consuming. The invention addresses itself to the above problem. The invention provides a method and apparatus for conveniently and accurately labelling each section with an identification number. This identification number, which becomes an integral part of each tissue section, accompanies the specimen from the very outset of its processing through to the making of the finished slides, wherein the number becomes an integral part of each tissue section.